The growing complexity of supply chains poses new challenges for Agricultural Research Centers and statistical agencies. The aim of this perspective paper is to discuss the role of empirical research in understanding the complex forms of governance in agribusiness. The authors argue that there are three fundamental levels of analysis: (i) the basic structure of the market, (ii) the formal contractual arrangements that govern relations within the agroindustrial system and (iii) the transactional dimensions governed by non-contractual means. The case of the agrochemical industry in Brazil illustrates how traditional analyses that only address market structure are insufficient to fully explain the agricultural sector and its supply chain. The article concludes by suggesting some indicators which could be collected by statistical agencies to improve understanding of the complex relationships among agribusiness segments. In doing so, the paper seeks to minimize costs and to enable a better formulation of public and private policies.

This is a conceptual paper supported by empirical research giving details of a new Business Narrative Modelling Language (BNML). The need for BNML arose given a growing dissatisfaction with qualitative
research approaches and also due to the need to bring entrepreneurs, especially those with little training in management theory, closer to the academic (as well as practitioner) discussion of innovation
and strategy for value creation. We aim primarily for an improved communication process of events which can be described using the narrative, in the discussion of the value creation process. Our findings, illustrated through a case study, should be of interest to both researchers and practitioners alike.

Empirical modeling is considered from the perspectives of a general scheme for the Strategy of Empirical Research and Optimization Process (SEROP). This approach intends to facilitate the understanding of the necessary steps to arrive to mathematical models able to appropriately describe the behavior of a group of controllable independent variables related to a certain response. Aspects connected with definition of the problem, variables identification and optimization stages are discussed. As an example of SEROP application, it is presented the empirical modeling of the basic extraction of alginic acid from brown algae.

The growing complexity of supply chains poses new challenges for Agricultural Research Centers and statistical agencies. The aim of this perspective paper is to discuss the role of empirical research in understanding the complex forms of governance in agribusiness. The authors argue that there are three fundamental levels of analysis: (i) the basic structure of the market, (ii) the formal contractual arrangements that govern relations within the agroindustrial system and (iii) the transactional dimensions governed by non-contractual means. The case of the agrochemical industry in Brazil illustrates how traditional analyses that only address market structure are insufficient to fully explain the agricultural sector and its supply chain. The article concludes by suggesting some indicators which could be collected by statistical agencies to improve understanding of the complex relationships among agribusiness segments. In doing so, the paper seeks to minimize costs and to enable a better formulation of public and private policies.

There has long been tension between bioethicists whose work focuses on classical philosophical inquiry and those who perform empirical studies on bioethical issues. While many have argued that empirical research merely illuminates current practices and cannot inform normative ethics, others assert that research-based work has significant implications for refining our ethical norms. In this essay, I present a novel construct for classifying empirical research in bioethics into four hierarchical categories: Lay of the Land, Ideal Versus Reality, Improving Care, and Changing Ethical Norms. Through explaining these four categories and providing examples of publications in each stratum, I define how empirical research informs normative ethics. I conclude by demonstrating how philosophical inquiry and empirical research can work cooperatively to further normative ethics.

non-peer-reviewed; Background: The number of reported empirical studies of Open Source Software (OSS) has continuously been increasing. However, there has been no effort to systematically review the state of the practice of reporting
empirical studies of OSS with respect to the recommended standards of performing and reporting empirical studies in software engineering. It is important to understand, how to report empirical studies of OSS in order to make them useful for practitioners and researchers. Research aim: The aim of our research is to gain insights in the state of the practice of reporting empirical studies of OSS in order to identify the gaps to be filled for improving the quality of evidence being provided for OSS.
Method: To that end, we decided to systematically review the empirical studies of OSS. A total of 63 papers reporting empirical studies were selected from the four editions of the Proceedings of the International Conference on Open Source Systems. The data were extracted and synthesised from the selected papers for analysis.
Results and conclusions: We have found that the quality of the reported OSSrelated
empirical studies needs to be significantly improved. Based on the results of our systematic review and general principles of reporting good empirical research...

Do people care about income inequality
and does income inequality affect subjective well-being?
Welfare theories can predict either a positive or a negative
impact of income inequality on subjective well-being and
empirical research has found evidence on a positive,
negative or non significant relation. This paper attempts to
determine some of the possible causes of such empirical
heterogeneity. Using a very large sample of world citizens,
the author tests the consistency of income inequality in
predicting life satisfaction. The analysis finds that income
inequality has a negative and significant effect on life
satisfaction. This result is robust to changes in regressors
and estimation choices and also persists across different
income groups and across different types of countries.
However, this relation is easily obscured or reversed by
multicollinearity generated by the use of country and year
fixed effects. This is particularly true if the number of
data points for inequality is small, which is a common
feature of cross-country or longitudinal studies.

The paper provides a review of the
empirical literature in economics that has attempted to test
the relative income hypothesis as put forward by Duesemberry
(1949) and the relative deprivation hypothesis as formalized
by Runciman (1966). It is argued that these two hypotheses
and the empirical models used to test them are essentially
similar and make use of the same relative income concept.
The review covers the main intellectual contributions that
led to the formulation and tests of these hypotheses, the
main formulations of the utility and econometric equations
used in empirical studies, the main econometric issues that
complicate tests of the hypotheses, and the empirical
results found in the literature. The majority of studies
uses absolute and relative income together as explanatory
factors in utility models and finds absolute income to have
a positive and significant effect on utility (happiness).
The majority of studies also finds relative income to be a
significant factor in explaining utility but the sign of
this relation varies across studies. The source of this
variation is complex to detect given that few results are
directly comparable across studies because of differences in
model specifications.

Empirical Software Engineering research has achieved considerable results in building our knowledge about selecting and applying appropriate empirical methods for technology evaluation. Empirical studies in general and empirical studies in industrial settings in particular have played an important role in successful transition of many Software Engineering technologies to industry, for example, defect detection techniques and automated test cases. However, conducting empirical research in industrial settings remains a challenging undertaking for a variety of reasons. There is no substantial literature reporting on the challenges and complexities involved in conducting empirical studies in an industry in general and in settings whose business models are built around global sourcing. This paper reports some of our experiences and lessons learned from conducting empirical research in industry. Some of the observed challenges include short time horizon for research, high expectations, limited research skills, and the 'acceptable' research rigor. The paper discusses some of these issues with relevant examples and provides some strategies for overcoming these issues. We also stress that researchers and practitioners should share their experiences of conducting empirical research in order to help build a body of knowledge to guide the future efforts.; Shilpi Jain...

Background: The paper combines the analytical and instrumental perspectives on communities of practice (CoPs) to reflect on potential challenges that may arise in the process of interprofessional and inter-organisational joint working within the Collaborations for Leaderships in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRCs)--partnerships between the universities and National Health Service (NHS) Trusts aimed at conducting applied health research and translating its findings into day-to-day clinical practice. Discussion: The paper discusses seminal theoretical literature on CoPs as well as previous empirical research on the role of these communities in healthcare collaboration, which is organised around the following three themes: knowledge sharing within and across CoPs, CoP formation and manageability, and identity building in CoPs. It argues that the multiprofessional and multi-agency nature of the CLAHRCs operating in the traditionally demarcated organisational landscape of the NHS may present formidable obstacles to knowledge sharing between various professional groupings, formation of a shared 'collaborative' identity, and the development of new communities within the CLAHRCs. To cross multiple boundaries between various professional and organisational communities and hence enable the flow of knowledge...

At the heart of the debate about public
versus private ownership lie three questions: 1) Does
competition matter more than ownership? 2) Are state
enterprises more subject to welfare-reducing interventions
by government than private firms are? 3) Do state
enterprises suffer more from governance problems than
private firms do? Even if the answers to these questions
favor private ownership, the question must still be asked:
Do distortions in the process of privatization mean that
privatized firms perform worse than state enterprises? The
author's review found greater ambiguity about the
merits of privatization and private ownership in the
theoretical literature than in the empirical literature. In
most cases, empirical research strongly favors private
ownership in competitive markets over a state-owned
counterfactual (although construction of the counterfactual
is itself a problem). Theory's ambiguity about
ownership in monopoly markets seems better justified. Since
the choice confronting governments is between state
ownership and privatization rather than between
privatization and optimality...

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of qualitative research within the scope of management scientific studies, referring to its philosophy, nature and instruments. It also confronts it with quantitative methodology, approaching its differences as well as its complementariness and synergies, with the purpose of explaining, from a more analytic point of view, the relevance of qualitative methodology in the course of an authentic and real research despite its complexity.
Design/methodology/approach: Regardless of its broad application, one may attest the scarcity literature that focuses on qualitative research applied to the management scientific area, as opposed to the large amount that refers to quantitative research.
Findings: The paper shows the influence that qualitative research has on management scientific research.
Originality/value:. Qualitative research assumes an important role within qualitative research by allowing for the study and analysis of certain types of phenomena that occur inside organisations, and in respect of which quantitative studies cannot provide an answer.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to promote qualitative methodology within the scientific community of management. The specific objective is oriented to propose an empirical research process based on case study method. This is to ensure rigor in the empirical research process, that future research may follow a similar procedure to that is proposed.
Design/methodology/approach: Following a qualitative methodological approach, we propose a research process that develops according to four phases, each with several stages. This study analyses the preparatory and field work phases and their stages.
Findings: The paper shows the influence that case studies have on qualitative empirical research process in management.
Originality/value:. Case study method assumes an important role within qualitative research by allowing for the study and analysis of certain types of phenomena that occur inside organisations, and in respect of which quantitative studies cannot provide an answer.

Personalization agents are incorporated in many Web sites to tailor content and interfaces for individual users. In contrast to the proliferation of personalized Web services worldwide, empirical research on the effects of Web personalization is scant. Ho

Empirical research studies in Translation Studies have increased remarkably since the 1980s. In this article more than 50 studies on written translation are classified according to their objective, the sample and the measuring instruments used. The major problems shown by these studies are analysed and, finally, some steps that could help researchers in this sense are proposed.

Fonte: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International LawPublicador: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law

This is the accepted version of the article. The final version is available from Cambridge Journals Online at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9158038.; This is the story behind another story. Inspired by the anthropological practice of reflexivity, it traces some practical, epistemological, ethical, and existential questions behind a book based on empirical socio-legal research into international criminal law in situations of conflict. The challenges involved in such research are at times impossible to overcome. Indeed, the challenges may be such that the researcher will never be able to answer her original question fully and confidently. However, challenges can be findings in themselves. They may reveal insights into the role of law in a society, the limitations of vocabularies, the overexposure of international criminal law, and inequalities in global knowledge production. Rather than merely obstructing research into a topical issue, challenges may shift the researcher's attention to other, more fundamental, questions. Nonetheless, understanding challenges as findings does not resolve the existential problem of the researcher's possible complicity in maintaining the very challenges that she analyses and perhaps ambitiously tries to overcome.

This paper addresses the question of empirical research in the field of using history in Mathematics Education. More precisely, it focuses on what role empirical research may serve in the discussion of why to use history in mathematics education and how to do it. This is exemplified mainly by referring to two empirical research studies on the use of history in the Danish upper secondary mathematics program. Also it is illustrated how both the research design and research methodology of these two studies were dependant on the initial purpose of using history being concerned with history as a goal rather than history as a tool. Finally, perspectives are drawn on the possible benefits of increasing the amount of empirical research being done within the field of using history in mathematics education.

This article is intended as a brief introduction to the lifeworld approach to empirical research in education. One decisive feature of this approach is the inclusion of an explicit discussion of its ontological assumptions in the research design. This does not yet belong to the routines of empirical research in education. Some methodological consequences of taking the lifeworld ontology as a ground for empirical research are discussed as well as the importance of creativity in the choice of method for particular projects. In this way, the lifeworld approach has its own particular perspective in phenomenological, empirical research in education. The article concludes with a description of an empirical study based on the lifeworld approach in order to illuminate the possibilities for empirical research in education as well as the significance of this approach for education.

The research problem of concern here is: What criteria should be used when congregations are analysed? Congregations as faith communities are defined variously. Discerning the local congregation as a defined and as an empirical subject plays a major role in answering the research question. The theological points of departure are that any measure of a local congregation has to deal with issues like faithfulness to the gospel and the missional identity and integrity of the congregation as a contextual faith community. The hypothesis is that, when theologically informed and motivated, congregations can and should be analysed in the process of continuing reformation. This article describes a number of approaches to and outcomes of empirical research related to congregational analysis. Follow-up research to be submitted for publication will deal with the missional identity, the ministerial role-fulfilment of the congregation, and a proposal to analyse these in a way that is theologically faithful and contextually relevant.